There he went straight into the First Team, in 1898 was capped for the first time and clearly attracted the attention of clubs Down South. By then he was married. In 1894 he in Longriggend had wed, Bridget Conway, from neighbouring Caldercruix. Both were nineteen. They would have five children, two girls and three boys, one of each born in Scotland, indeed in Longriggend. Thus it was that in 1898 Liverpool signed the twenty-three year old, where he was the club's joint top scorer in that first season and runners-up spot and it was from Anfield that a second cap was won, this time against England, albeit in an away-loss. 

However, in 1900, whilst the family had moved to and remained in Merseyside, he registered as a Paper Mill Worker, three children born there, he was to move on sideways to Blackburn, where he would play until 1903. He was not quite thirty, and might have had more time in England but instead returned North, to Dundee, for the best part of a season, two more back at St. Mirren.  

It was probably at this point that the family would settle in Stirling, he having a final year at local side, Kings Park, at which point he seems to have gone back to his previous employment. Certainly in 1911 he was a miner once more, probably remaining one during The Great War. But post-War he, his wife and children were back in Glasgow he still cutting coal and it was there that he was widowed. In 1924 Bridget died at the age of just fifty from their home between Parkhead and Tollcross and fourteen years later it was from the same address Hugh was taken to Stobhill Hospital, where he passed away in 1938 at the age of not quite sixty-two. His buried in nearby St. Peter's Cemetery.